Jeanne Celestine Lakin was a child living in Rwanda, Africa, when the Rwandan Genocide started in April 1994. Now living in Houston, Lakin has shared her experience in a memoir titled A Voice in the Darkness, and has also started a nonprofit organization, One Million Orphans, to help orphans have a better life.

Before the genocide, Lakin notes that she had a happy life. She had a large family and had all of her extended family close by.

Her father was elected in her community as a mediator. If anyone had a problem, they would come to him.

“There was trust in our family. I had everything I needed. And all of that was taken away in a very short time,” Lakin said.

In Rwanda there were two main ethnic groups, the Tutsi and the Hutu. In the early 1990s, the Hutu government started to use propaganda, saying that the Tutsi’s who had been in exile were returning back to invade the country.

“It was just like in Nazi Germany,” Lakin explained. “We were dehumanized. We were called snakes and cockroaches.”

Lakin says that as a child she did not even know what her ethnicity was, until she asked her mother, because of segregation occuring at her middle school.

“When she broke the news that I was Tutsi, I felt like I was punched in the stomach,” Lakin said.

Lakin’s older brother ended up joining the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which were the rebels that fled the country. Because of that, her father was put into jail and was questioned if the family was supporting the Tutsi’s in exile.

“We had seen so many people gone missing … but we had no idea that it would be as bad as it turned out,” Lakin said.

On April 6, 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana’s airplane was shot down, and he was killed. Habyarimana was the president of Rwanda at the time, and a Hutu.

“My father came home on April 7, and he said they are killing and not sparing anyone,” Lakin said.

Lakin’s father divided the family up into groups of three to keep everyone safer. Lakin was in charge of taking care of her three-year-old twin sisters. She originally went to her aunt’s, who was married to a Hutu, but she was sent away.

She ended up living in the bushes for months, always running and hiding.

Her uncle found her in hiding and told her that he saw her mother’s dead body, with her three-week old baby still strapped to her back. They thought the baby might still be alive, so Lakin went to her mother to save the boy, but she found out he had been slaughtered as well.

She later witnessed her father being killed with machetes. Lakin was nine years old at the time.

After a few months, Lakin heard that women and young girls had been forgiven. She went to the Mayor to confirm that this was accurate. The Mayor told her of a safe village to go to, but it actually was a killing spot.

Lakin ended up not being killed, but instead was abused and raped by the leader of the group. She was forced to be separated from her twin sisters, so Lakin brought them to her aunt’s house. The leader realized that the RPF was coming, so he fled to Congo and took her with him. He sold Lakin to another man who was 10 years older, who intended on marrying her.

“I couldn’t imagine being married as a child. I decided to run back to Rwanda. It took me months. When I arrived, the country had been liberated. The country was upside down, but it was safe,” Lakin said.

The orphanages were over capacity, so she was turned away. She tried to find employment but she was abused by the woman who hired her.

She finally was placed with a foster family, and she joined them as they moved to the United States.

“I wanted to make something out of myself. The fact that I survived, it makes me feel like I have a purpose,” Lakin said.

Lakin learned English, and then went to college and got a masters degree at Eastern Washington University.

She started writing in a journal as a way to share with her siblings what had happened to her.

“My heart was so heavy. I kept all of this inside of me, the things I had seen,” Lakin said.

Unfortunately, her siblings were not ready to hear about it. But she kept on writing. With encouragement from her husband, Paul, she realized that it could be not just for her siblings, but for the world to read. Her book, A Voice in the Darkness, can be purchased on avoiceinthedarkness.org.

Lakin, as an orphan herself, also wanted to help orphans.

“I had opportunities to work as an adoption counselor. As I read files on these children all over the world, I found that all of these children just needed love and to be cared for. Their struggles resonated with mine. I walked in their shoes,” Lakin said.

Her nonprofit, One Million Orphans provides care such as food, clothing, counseling and medical care.

“Just this morning I received a picture of a child in Burundi with their new school uniform. It makes me smile,” Lakin said.

Lakin hopes that if there is one thing others can take from her experiences, it is for people to look at others as just people.

“If we can walk across the aisle and try to understand others, we are not as different as our society makes it,” Lakin said.